


The only story I will ever be able to tell

by SilverDoe290s



Series: Grindeldore Character Study Pieces [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ...oops?, Albus' death is part of the premise, Angst, Character Study, Gellert Grindelwald in prison, I apologize for the pretentiousness and self-indulgence levels of this fic, It occurs to me that in three out of four of the fics I've written for this pairing, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Strong themes of death, my attempt at writing poetically, pure unadulterated angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 12:54:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18261713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDoe290s/pseuds/SilverDoe290s
Summary: In prison Gellert Grindelwald thinks, and dreams, and tries to come to terms with the knowledge of Albus Dumbledore's death.





	The only story I will ever be able to tell

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”    
― **Donna Tartt,** **The Secret History**

* * *

Gellert Grindelwald had always had a complex relationship with time. 

When he was younger, he had chased it relentlessly. The future loomed ahead of him and he had to be prepared to seize it when it came; he could not let a single moment go to waste. 

Later, he had become engrossed by the present. There was always another battle, always another opponent to face. 

He had spent his whole life chasing time and now it had lost him, let him drift back into the past. 

* * *

 Sometimes he wandered down different paths. There was no sense in playing out the same sequence of events, over and over, ultimately, was there? After all, repetition was the mark of madness. 

But perhaps he was a little mad, then, for there were some things he could not help but repeat. Skin pressed against skin, fingers tangled in flowing auburn hair; it wasn’t the physical company he missed, not really, but that was the easiest thing for his mind to recreate, and it did help to blot out all else, and touch hurt less than words. Words could lie, and had, but touch was raw and nakedly honest. 

* * *

 There was a moment that came back to him, constantly. They were lying in Albus’ bed; both too tired to truly think, much less speak. The sheets felt impossibly light; the air was just beginning to cool. Albus snuck a hand under his shirt; his skin couldn’t have been more than half a degree colder than Gellert’s but it felt like being splashed in ice cold water. A tremor ran through Gellert. 

Once, while at Durmstrang, he had attempted to replicate a spell he’d pieced together from fragments of runes deemed untranslatable. He’d made all the right preparations, spoken the incantation; magic pooled at the tip of his wand, ready to do his bidding. But he could not direct it away from himself, and instead of being released it flowed back into him. Too much, too suddenly, when _he_ was never intended to be the one affected; his knees had buckled, all control lost; for the next few months, his memory always skirted delicately around the incident, torn between terror and fascination as his body was overtaken by the force of his own magic. 

This was how he felt that night, as Albus trailed his fingers down Gellert’s spine.  He had started this; he knew how to control, to capture others’ attention and direct it where he needed to, but somehow the energy that was intended to be directed outwards turned on him and all he could do was lie there, perfectly still, and allow himself to be pinned by those clear blue eyes. 

* * *

 The memory was fragmentary, torn from its context to preserve perfection; like a shard of glass that was smooth and flawless until you reached its edges, and only when you pulled back your hand would you realize your palm was bleeding. Gellert emerged from those memories disoriented, with a sharp, jagged ache in his chest. His clothes felt rough and wrong against his skin; the few rays of light streaming in through the window stabbed at his brain, and when he swallowed, he tasted blood at the back of his throat. 

* * *

 Pages lay scattered at his feet. Paper and ink were among the few amenities he had been granted in prison; among the few he needed. He still had visions; his magic must not yet have realized there was nothing he could do with them, now. Still, he recorded them, faithfully. Not because the world had any right to them, but because he thought of this knowledge – _his_ knowledge – being lost forever was unbearable to him.  

Perhaps they would be given to Albus, when Gellert was dead. Surely, Albus would think to request them. There were no other hands he would entrust them to.  

Sometimes, he forgot himself, and found himself interspersing the visions with personal commentary. Some practical suggestions ( _he cannot be allowed to become Minister; it would set us back by over a century_ ), some cynical and bitter ( _you may as well let this come to pass; they have already proven they would sooner self-destruct than listen to anything I have to say_ ), and some – when his judgement was compromised, his mind overwhelmed by a past long gone – excessively revealing ( _we could have changed this, were we still together. Will you truthfully tell me you never think of that?_ ).  

It felt dangerously close to the letters he had written when he was sixteen, full of schemes and plans never properly fulfilled. 

He wondered, sometimes, why he recorded it all so diligently. He was no saviour; he had tried to be once, and the trail of ashes in his wake had won him nothing but these years of silence and regret. Perhaps the world did not want to be saved, and twisted any attempt to change it back around into something monstrous. Perhaps the Greater Good was something that could only exist in the mind of naïve children, and reality was never more than one form of injustice pitted against another.  

* * *

 “Do you really believe it? That we alone can change the world?” Albus had asked him once in a rare moment of uncertainty.  

The light shimmered around them, casting the field where they stood in a faint golden glow. There was a certain dreamlike quality to it. Reality was a silk fabric that flowed around them and Gellert saw every weakness, every place where it could snag and unravel.  

There were a dozen different futures he had seen, and all of them ended in destruction. Albus, torn apart by the black smoke of an obscurial. Himself, kneeling on shattered cobbles, bloody and beaten. Cities razed to the ground, a bare and empty cell. A haunting sense of loneliness and loss that stalked him, not because of what had been, but because of what one day would. 

And yet, he had faith – a foolish, childlike faith perhaps - that there was some single, golden thread weaved between each possible disaster and if he only chose his movements carefully and wisely, he could follow it to victory. After all, if this was possible, if _they_ were possible – Albus standing before him, basked in light that made the shades in his hair shift like the colours of a sunset – then anything else must be as well. 

“Oh, my dear,” he answered, pressing their foreheads together, “I am certain of it.” 

* * *

No, he did not write in hopes that someone, someday, would prevent the disasters that still remained to unfold. If he, with his innate talent for magic, with his foresight and caution and raw power, had not managed it, he did not believe there was anyone that could.  

The blood of thousands was on his hands. It coated the inside of his throat at night when he tried to sleep, stained his sleeve when he wiped it from his lips in the morning after a particularly violent coughing fit.  

They would all have died with or without him, in the end. Death was life’s only constant. But not so quickly, or violently, and the dream that was meant to grant meaning to those lives cut short had never materialized to wash the blood away.  

He counted their deaths in his sleep each night, and yet, he did not want the world’s forgiveness for it. He would not accept it if it were offered, though he knew it never would be.  The only man capable of granting him forgiveness was the only man capable of understanding him completely. 

That, in the end, was why he wrote. 

* * *

 He saw Albus, sometimes, of course. The Albus of his memories, yes, the beautiful, brilliant, if understated, boy who had known every inch of his body and – more significantly – every crevice of his mind; but also, the mature version, white-haired and inscrutable, still every bit as beautiful. For the first few years of his imprisonment he had tried to hate him. Albus had walked away from the future they could have shared; from the moment they split apart, something deep inside Gellert had known that every effort he made was doomed. He would never build the world he wanted with its key piece missing. 

Albus would suffer for it, he told himself. He would not, _could_ not be satisfied with an ending like this. He would never find someone else he could fully reveal himself to; if not physically imprisoned, he would spend the rest of his life trapped inside his mind, tearing himself apart with the special kind of ruthlessness they were both capable of. 

The thought had never brought the comfort it was meant to. It only left him bitter, made him feel Albus’ imagined pain like a stab to the gut. 

Perhaps Albus had found peace, somehow, in that school of his. After all, he had never shared Gellert’s need to be seen; perhaps he found a strange kind of comfort in isolation and the privacy it offered, the security of knowing his thoughts were only his own. Perhaps he found peace and satisfaction in the simple things in life. 

That was not the ending Gellert had wanted for them; years ago, he would have derided it as unworthy of his only equal. _Peace_ was a simple thing for simple-minded people. _They_ were made for glory, to rule hand-in-hand; he would have called it a tragedy for Albus to waste his potential settling for simplicity. 

These days, though, peace was such a distant concept that Gellert would give anything to find it, and more besides to grant it to Albus. But that could happen only if Albus forgot him entirely, and _that_ was the one price Gellert found too high to even consider. 

* * *

 He saw a lake wreathed in flames. 

It was magnificent. The light chased shadows across the walls of a cave, and ultimately won; it was impossible, after all, to hide from the glare of Albus’ light when he did not want you to, Gellert knew that well. 

They had always had an affinity for fire, the two of them. It was something powerful, passionate, _cleansing._ A part of Gellert had always known he would burn up. He’d accepted that; it wasn’t the worst fate, was it? Everything decayed eventually, and most people were like firewood stored safely in a shed where it would slowly rot and be eaten by ants. Was it not better to let firewood do what it was meant to? Be consumed in a scorching blaze? 

That thought was not much comfort, though, once the blaze was extinguished, and only ashes remained. Unlike Albus’ phoenix, Gellert knew, he would never rise from those ashes. 

Albus stood in the center of the blaze. From far away, he might have been an avenging angel, cast in stark shades of black and white by the light surrounding him. Up close, though, his face was lined and worn, his shoulders curled in on themselves.  He seemed on the verge of collapse. 

 _What have you done to yourself, my love?_  

* * *

 There was a tower, in his visions. 

He tried not to think too hard on this. He had seen other deaths for Albus, in the past, and they had never come to pass; why, then, should this one? 

And so, Gellert did not flinch when Albus pleaded with the other man in the tower. Did not turn away when the fateful words were spoken, when green light illuminated the entirety of the landscape, revealing endless pine forest in the background. His eyes followed the body the entire way down.  

This was not how it would happen. Albus would not be so easily defeated. Albus would never _beg._  

There was something more to the story. There _had_ to be. 

* * *

 No, Gellert did not think of it, but he dreamt of it all the same. Dreamt of falling, and the shock of hitting the ground. The crack of pain, of every bone shattering, his head splitting open. He awoke in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. 

That was not what he had seen; the curse would hit Albus before the ground did. He would not be conscious for it. But the dreams persisted, against all reason. Sometimes, they did not end in pain; they ended in a darkness that spread through his mind, devouring every other memory and leaving nothing but the imprint of that tower burned against his eyelids. 

* * *

There was another dream he had, though Gellert was never quite certain if it was dream of memory. Albus was standing in the river that ran by Godric’s Hollow, water dripping from his hair. Gellert watched, entranced, when Albus smiled suddenly and dove beneath the surface. 

Gellert plunged in after him, and forced his eyes open; keeping them open underwater was a trick he had taught himself. 

The world was green and murky. He could barely make out Albus’s form, suspended in the water. His long hair wrapped around him like seaweed. For a moment, he looked half-dead, and Gellert reached out for him. The moment his fingers brushed Albus’ arm, Albus reached back, clinging to Gellert’s shoulders as Gellert wrapped his legs around Albus’ waist. Everything felt slower underwater. Time, that devil Gellert wrestled with constantly, had been abandoned on the shore; here, there was just him and Albus and eternity.  

The moment seemed to stretch out forever; Albus’ hair tickled Gellert’s shoulders, swaying gently with the current, and in that one moment Gellert thought that if they both drowned right then and truly preserved this moment forever, he could not be happier. 

* * *

 The inevitability of destruction had been a kind of comfort to Gellert once. If everything turned to dust eventually, what did it matter if he sped up some ends in pursuit of his own goals? He could create something beautiful while destroying only what was impermanent anyway. 

In their own way, he and Albus had been dead to each other for decades now. Albus had not written to him, had not spoken to him, had not visited. It should have been all the same to Gellert whether he was out there somewhere, leading his own life, or not.  

Death was a dartboard of possibilities, and Gellert knew the score of each ring perfectly.  

That did not stop it from hurting when the dart finally landed. 

* * *

 The visions of Albus came to a sudden halt one day, and the silence that followed was more disquieting than anything Gellert had Seen. 

Oh, he Saw other things, of course. People and events he did not know, had never cared about. With each vision that wasn’t of Albus, he grew ever more frustrated.  

Gellert did something then that he had not done in longer than he could remember: he _focused._ Blocked out all the noise, stopped the steady flow of thoughts and images that passed naturally through his mind, filtered only what he wanted. 

For a long time, there was nothing. And then: a glimpse. A smooth marble grave; a hooded figure standing over it, Elder Wand raised triumphantly in the air. 

Gellert drew back from the vision, reeling. He felt as though the air had been torn from his lungs. 

* * *

 

In truth, nothing had really changed. He had known this: that he and Albus had been torn apart irreparably, and they would almost certainly never see each other again, much less fix anything at all. He had known this as well: that everyone died eventually, and their time was rapidly approaching. But somehow, until that moment, those facts had seemed flexible, mutable. When Gellert could dip so easily in and out of the stream of time, it was difficult not to imagine that the facts could be rearranged to spell out a different narrative; difficult not to dream that Albus would somehow, miraculously, simultaneously, perform the same permutation of events, and so the truth would shift. Albus must have felt the same, Gellert thought; otherwise, why keep him alive with no intention to ever see him? 

Now, though, with the final chapter written, the book slammed shut; the words in it suddenly permanently fixed. The facts he had _known_ all along came into a sudden, unyielding focus. Time settled into a single pattern and Gellert was caught up in a current he had thought himself set aside by. 

* * *

 

He did not cry. To do so would break the silence that had settled around Nurmengard, and that silence felt sacred now. If their story would not change then it could be at least be left here, undisturbed and untainted in the darkness. No-one would ever know they had ever been more than enemies. That fact tore at him; the love between him and Albus had been something brilliant and shining, once, something that deserved to be put on display and admired; not lost to history. But their eyes would have to be enough. 

Scattered pages lay scattered about his feet, carrying words meant only for Albus. He gathered them up, one by one.  

What they held, in truth, was far more than just visions. It was _him_ ; every loose thought that had crossed his mind, every thread he had followed. _Look,_ he had meant to tell Albus, _this is the world through my eyes. This is who I am and why I did the things I did. Read this and know me, understand me, remember me._  

Words that would never reach him, now. 

Gellert reached into the last reserves of his magic, rusty from disuse and from being bound by the wards that kept him trapped here, and found enough for a small spark. He tossed it at the top page in the pile.  

The flames spread quickly, licking up Gellert’s words with greed. The paper in its wake went rigid, turned black and then crumbled; something inside of Gellert tore open as he watched the fire consume all that was left of him. When it was finished, he collapsed back against the wall and closed his eyes, feeling weightless and empty. 

Now he, too, was dead in every way that mattered. The final formality would catch up to him, in the end.  

Perhaps death could finally repair them, as life never had. 


End file.
